A warewash machine is a utility dishwasher used in many restaurants, healthcare facilities and other locations to efficiently clean and sanitize cooking and eating articles, such as, dishes, pots, pans, utensils and other cooking equipment. Articles are placed on a rack and provided to a washing chamber of the warewash machine. In the chamber, rinse agents and cleaning products are applied to the articles over a predefined period of time referred to as a “wash cycle.” A wash cycle includes a cleaning cycle and a rinsing cycle. At least one cleaning product is applied to the articles during the cleaning cycle. The cleaning product is typically a chemical solution formed by dissolving one or more chemical products in water. The term chemical product is used broadly to encompass, without limitation, any type of detergent, soap or any other product used for cleaning and/or sanitizing.
At least one rinse agent is applied to the articles during the rinsing cycle. The rinse agent is typically water with one or more wetting and/or sanitizing agents. The article racks contain holes that enable the cleaning product and rinse agent to pass through the racks during the cleaning and rinsing cycles, respectively. At the end of the wash cycle, the rack is removed from the washing chamber so that other racks carrying other articles may be moved into the washing chamber. The wash cycle is then repeated for each of these subsequent racks. Wash cycles may be customized for specific types of racks and the articles that the racks carry.
The cleaning products (hereinafter, “chemical solutions”) applied to the articles by the warewash machine are formed and contained in a solution tank typically located on the underside of the warewash machine. A wash module is provided above the solution tank and in the lower portion of the washing chamber. The wash module extracts a chemical solution from the tank and applies the solution to the articles contained in the rack during the cleaning cycle. Following the cleaning cycle, a rinse module, which is provided in the upper portion of the washing chamber, administers the rinsing cycle by applying a rinse agent to the articles thereby rinsing the chemical solution from the articles.
Operation of a warewash machine is dependent on various operational settings that affect the quality of a wash process. Such settings include, without limitation, a conductivity setpoint defining a target concentration of chemical product relative to all other chemicals (e.g., rinse agents, etc.) and particles (e.g., soil from articles, ions, minerals, etc.) within the chemical solution, an amount of rinse agent that is to be dispensed during a rinse cycle, a delay for dispensing the rinse agent and the chemical product upon initiation of a rinse cycle and a wash cycle, respectively, and a delay in signaling an alarm for indicating that the chemical product needs replenishing. In a commercial setting, operations of a warewash machine are typically monitored and controlled by a field service person employed by a service contractor or other like organization. As such, the field service person is responsible for setting these operational settings as part of his/her duty to ensure quality wash processes by the warewash machine.
Conventional systems require that the field service person set the operational settings based on information gathered on the environment in which the warewash machine will be or is being used. Such environmental information may be, for example, the hardness/softness of the water being used by the machine with the rinse agent, the actual or expected soil load that will be washed by the wash processes of the machine and the chemical characteristics of the chemical product used by the machine. This current approach is limited in that these operational settings are defined based on manual approximations by the field service persons taking into account the various types of environmental information. As with any manual approximation, the chance of human error affects the reliability that wash processes by the machine will satisfy a desired, or sometimes regulated, quality.
Further, if any of this environmental information were to change without the appropriate operational settings also being modified accordingly, the quality of the wash processes performed by the resident warewash machine is consequently affected. Service visits by field service persons are typically periodically scheduled for each particular warewashing location. Unfortunately, thus, it may be days, if not weeks, until a warewash machine associated with such an environmental change is serviced.